Not all planters could speak so confidently of their ability to find means to discharge a debt, for the truth is that the profits of tobacco culture were by no means so large as has often been supposed.  A recent writer speaks of huge incomes of twenty thousand to eighty thousand pounds a year and asserts that “the ordinary planter could count on an income of from L3,000 to L6,000.”  The first figures are altogether fabulous, “paper profits” of the same sort that can be obtained by calculating profits upon the geometrical increase of geese as illustrated in a well known story.  Even the last mentioned sums were realized only under the most favorable conditions and by a few planters.  Much of the time the price of the staple was low and the costs of transportation and insurance, especially in time of war, were considerable.  Washington himself had a consignment of tobacco captured by the French.

The planters were by no means so prosperous as is often supposed and neither was their life so splendid as has often been pictured.  Writers seem to have entered into a sort of conspiracy to mislead us concerning it.  The tendency is one to which Southern writers are particularly prone in all that concerns their section.  If they speak of a lawyer, he is always a profound student of the law; of a soldier, he is the bravest tenderest knight that ever trod shoe leather; of a lady, she is the most beautiful that ever graced a drawing-room.

The old Virginia life had its color and charm, though its color and charm lay in large part in things concerning which the writers have little or nothing to say.  It is true that a few planters had their gorgeous coaches, yet Martha Washington remembered when there was only one coach in the whole of Virginia, and throughout her life the roads were so wretched that those who traveled over them in vehicles ran in imminent danger of being overturned, with possible dislocation of limbs and disjointing of necks.  Virginians had their liveried servants, mahogany furniture, silver plate, silks and satins; an examination of the old account books proves that they often had these and many other expensive things, along with their Madeira and port wine.  But the same books show that the planter was chronically in debt and that bankruptcy was common, while accounts left by travelers reveal the fact that many of the mansion houses were shabby and run down, with rotting roofs, ramshackle doors, broken windows into which old hats or other garments had been thrust to keep the wind away.  In a word, a traveler could find to-day more elegance in a back county of Arkansas than then existed in tidewater Virginia.

The tobacco industry was a culture that required much labor.  In the spring a pile of brush was burned and on the spot thus fertilized and made friable the seed were sowed.  In due course the ground was prepared and the young plants were transplanted into rows.  Later they must be repeatedly plowed, hoed and otherwise cultivated and looked after and finally the leaves must be cut or gathered and carried to the dry house to be dried.  One man could care for only two or three acres, hence large scale cultivation required many hands—­result, the importation of vast numbers of indentured servants and black slaves, with the blighting effects always consequent upon the presence of a servile class in a community.